Explore you, p.14
Explore You, page 14
Yet still, it seems now my planetary axis is tilted.
I avoided going for a run these last couple of mornings and did home workouts instead. No, staying away from Cher does not relieve my thoughts of her long legs, how they’d feel wrapped around my shoulders again, with her toned, muscular ass thrusting in my hands. But I’m trying to be responsible here.
Now, with all the world coming down on me, I’m a little wound up. My dick could use a workout. Sure, I could call Rylen and she’d come running to top me off. But in just a matter of days, things have changed.
I am intrigued with Cher beyond sexual attraction. I find myself wanting to hear her shit-talk more often, wondering what she would say to some of my business decisions, how she might assess my work challenges. What smart-ass remarks she’d make to add that extra hot sauce to my day. I even question which of us can run faster, if she can climb rocks, sleep under the stars, the kinds of outdoorsy thrills that are dealbreakers for most women more concerned with maintaining their hair. But from what I remember about Cher, her hair was always matted up in knots. One moment it would be all pressed and cute, and later, the very same day, that shit would look like tumbleweed. Now I understand why.
Me doing Rylen at this point would be like eating an unsatisfying meal. My tastebuds only sweat for one delicacy. And Rylen’s not it.
Also quite honestly, since Cher crossed my path, I haven’t thought of Maddy nearly as much as I expected to when I arrived. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve thought of her at all.
Before I head to my parents’ and then to a private jet, Tosca grabs me. She says everything with her eyes.
“I know, Tos.”
She practically cracks my ribs squeezing so hard. “You know what, Kev?”
I roll my eyes, because damn, she gets on my nerves. “I know.”
Last stop before I roll out is my folks’. Lion and Brendan have already headed back to their respective states. But I only came to address Dad.
“Oh, good, I thought you might have left. I’m so glad you’re here,” Mom says, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. “I’ve been praying all weekend, that you would change your mind and not do this thrill company thing with those English boys.” Her lovely hands pat and squeeze my arms as I walk through the breezeway. “I just want us to be a family, and for you and your father to work together. The way you used to.”
“I love you, Mom,” I whisper, kissing her forehead. “But I need to talk to Dad alone.” Gently, I push her aside.
Her lips start quaking, and her gaze goes dead. “About what?”
“It’s between us.” She knows what it concerns.
I head to the entertainment room, where Dad is sitting back in his recliner watching a football game with a couple of his buddies. After we all speak, they clear out since my mood doesn’t indicate I’m here for entertainment.
Dad continues watching the game, doesn’t look at me. “You came to your senses and accepted the deal for $650? That’s why you’re in my house?”
“Tell me about the Emerald Coast deal, Dad.” The fire of Kilauea burns its way up my esophagus.
Now his eyes move away from the large screen. “What the hell is there to tell? It was a land deal my daddy made. And a damn good one. Which was also good for you. And that’s not what you need to be talking to me about right now. You need to discuss the $100 mil out of $650 and—"
“Did you and Granddaddy blackmail Francis Manuel?” I’m opening a geyser just by saying that name in this house.
His finger goes up like an assault weapon and his mouth fastens. “Now you wait just a goddamn minute. Keep your nose out of business that does not concern you!”
“You just said that I benefitted from that deal. How?”
“Boy, don’t test me.”
“That’s just it, Dad. As much as I do love you, I think we both know I am not your boy anymore.” His eyes flare, and once upon a time, he would have gotten up and jerked me up by my shirt. Now that I stand four inches over him and have a little muscle, both in my body and in my bank account, I doubt he’ll try it. “Did you and Granddad take land from Francis Manuel and give it to Hayworth McCluskey?”
He leans forward in his seat, and now I have second thoughts about what he’ll do. “Mind your own damn business.”
My hands grab my cargo shorts. I really want it not to be true. The little twelve-year-old in me longs to jump back in my car, go bury my head in my computer and pretend to know nothing about this. But it’s the conversation I’ve avoided all summer. The reason I’ve avoided Dad. “I sold two apps by the time I was sixteen. Did you believe I couldn’t get in on my own?”
His mouth works around like the answer is in there, but he’s trying to keep it locked in. Finally, “Your brothers didn’t get in. I didn’t want to take the risk.”
Hearing him admit it without admitting it, kind of feels like steaming soup as it slides down your throat. You know it’s hot, but you don’t expect it to light your ass up.
“It wasn’t necessary. I was on track to get in on my own. I didn’t even want, or need, to go.”
“Lots of people made deals like that back in the day. Do you know how many of these white folks around here are doing the same thing? Why do you even care, Kevin? Hell, you’ve achieved more than ninety percent of the people who got in, with or without help.”
I don’t hear the rest of what he says. I’m now thinking about Adella, Chrissy and Maddy. The smugness on their faces when they first revealed this to me over the summer. They must hate me doubly because they assume I knew.
At the forefront of my consciousness is Adella, and the way her face looked a couple of months ago, as if she felt vindicated, after all those years, to confront me with a weakness in my perfect resume. The way she glared at me; it was clear she still wore the pain I dumped on her in childhood.
Adella and I share so much more than pain though. She may have been sickly and stricken, but she had the life I wanted. And I hated her for it.
Now, twenty years later, my mother tries to block me as I move toward the door. I need to escape this shit.
“Kevin, baby, where are you going? What did you say to him?” she murmurs.
“Let him go,” Dad says behind me.
Mom is still the most beautiful, spectacular woman in the world to me. Hair flowing down her back, porcelain and creamy perfection, a couple shades off from white. To this day, Dad still parades her like she is a prized possession. When I was a kid and worshipped the ground she walked on, I did also.
I don’t hate her now. For a time I did, but not anymore. In fact, in my eyes, she is still incredible, more for her cunning than her looks.
As an adult, I get it. I understand completely why she did what she did all those years ago. But we’re all still surviving the fallout.
“I’ll come stay at the home in Malibu and see you there,” she mumbles, half-grasping, half-hugging me.
“No, you won’t!” Dad barks, following us.
“I’ll see you soon,” she mutters.
“You heard what I said about putting my name on shit that is connected to Francis Manuel!”
Releasing myself from Mom’s grip, heading out the door, I’m calculating that Cher will, no doubt, make the call.
And forever cast a cloud over the rest of my life, over every move I ever make.
But I at least have to try and get to her first.
WHAT’S IN THERE?
CHER
My fingers are numb. Even though I brought a thick sweater, I’m shivering. Every digit on my body is frozen and about to crack off in this records refrigerator. I am certain that woman at the front desk, with her crooked beak nose and beady bird eyes, turned down that damn air just so a black girl could leave faster. I shake it off and go back to squinting and reviewing old documents in electronic storage.
I’m practically camped out in the Recorder’s Office, after what Kevin told me yesterday about the Benton Brothers.
His warning still smolders in my mind, so I delayed my flight by a day, and emailed my boss to explain, so I could come and check records. Flipping through microfiche, squinting at grants of title, wills, deeds, and trusts, I order copies of documents that show ownership of property to the Bentons’ parking deck.
I would make sure that, legally, Dream Stage comes out ahead. It doesn’t matter how long my eyes freeze in this refrigerator as I peer at tiny written documents that stretch back decades. Solomon and his partners would try hard to interfere with Chrissy’s major showcase nights, and we needed to be prepared. Especially because they’ve brought in Kevin Middleton.
Finally, near the end of the day, I find what I’m looking for. A lease from 1945, and a deed from 1958. I’ll just run them through a title company and have them checked. They’re probably legit, but I’ll conduct due diligence anyway.
My popsicle body shakes while I enter my credit card information to order the certified copies bearing the official seal of the Clerk of the Recorder’s Office for authentication.
As I leave that cold building, my body is overjoyed to feel the sun hit it again. But I feel nothing akin to joy when I board the plane leaving out of JFK that night.
I'm not sad. Kevin and I have never even kissed. His eating an apple from my mouth- though his tongue might have fed from mine like we were Adam and Eve- is still not a kiss.
I am not developing a jones for Kevin Middleton. An asshole. A jerk.
And I have a job to do. It's best that I am not distracted. The deal we are finalizing with the Benton Brothers for the garage will be a sound move. We scoured and looked over their credit, their history of doing business. No defaults ever. Only three lawsuits over the past sixty years that they've been in operation.
They want to see that MAC Dream Stage is good to make regular payments to set aside a guaranteed allotment of spaces, look at our financials.
He just wants to see your financials and share them with his friends so they can copy your strategy.
Kevin is not to be trusted, as Adella and Chrissy told me.
The Benton deal is a good look.
I sweep out of my mind how morning light bounces in his irises, reflecting the sunrise through the trees. Nor is it easy to dismiss my growing fantasies of seeing the sunrise in them every morning.
“So you had a good time last week back on your, uh, work trip? You were certainly too busy to answer any of my texts,” Ian, my on, again-off again sex buddy notes over his filet mignon.
Once I flew back into Virginia Beach, to nix this Kevin fixation I’m grappling with, I arranged for some distraction dick. But so far, Ian hasn’t pushed an apple to my mouth and told me to eat it.
“It was mostly work, and I was usually exhausted at the end of the day.”
“Mostly work, huh?” Ian asks, clearing his throat, and it’s obvious his smile seems forced. Maybe even jealous. “I suppose work involved you wearing short-ass coochie-cutters with NFL football players and supermodels? On superyachts and at breweries that are still closed to the general public?”
I almost choke on my sea bass. I forgot about those pesky long-range paps. “I was there doing a favor for one of my childhood friends. She wanted me to come with her to her brothers’ opening events.”
Ian slides his phone across the table. Shows me the same photo Chrissy showed me, taken with a long angle lens. Paparazzi must've apparently stood in a hidden location and snapped me getting on Keenan’s boat from afar. Paparazzi with no clearance to enter the boat, but hid out in Southampton to capture what they could.
Ian stares at me. “Since you clearly got some relax time in, you shouldn’t be so worked up as you were before you left. Right?"
Now this guy is not my man, but he wants to be. A fellow lawyer on the partnership track and then on to become a judge, he’s got the plan all laid out, and he wants to make me part of it. I’m sure he’s eying my mother’s Hamptons heritage.
His finger swipes to display photos of Kevin boarding the yacht. "So what is he like? Do you already know him? Didn't you two spend summers in Sag Harbor as kids? Is he one of you guys’ Black Hamptons crew?"
I shake my head. "He was several years older. He was my cousin’s enemy." I don’t owe this dude any explanation, but he has a nice tongue that I’ll likely be needing when I’m in a better mood, so I can’t tell him to get lost.
"So you and him didn't say hi on the boat? Or talk to each other at all? He must be a really cool person to talk to. All that brain. All that money. All those women."
He did more than that. And in those few short moments, he just might have given me the time of my life. Thinking about how I may never experience that again, I literally do feel about to suffocate now.
My throat closes up, and I press my eyelids shut, laying my forehead in the palm of my hand. This could be my life. Every single day.
"You know what? I'm not feeling too well. I'm sorry. I have to make this up to you later. I'm happy to split the bill, if you want."
Now I need to turn on my damsel-in-distress antics.
"You know that's not necessary, Cher. I'll take you home. Make you some soup or tea or whatever you want. Take care of you. In more ways than one," Ian says with a wink.
I shake my head at the very thought.
His tongue and dick have rated in my top five. I know he's hoping that one day our relationship will blossom into marriage. He wants to marry into the Hamptons inner circle. He's a social climber like that. As are most lawyers. I've learned the hard way that most of us only get a degree as a status symbol, as a doorway to politics or lifetime government benefits.
Ian is very much a Sheldon Rouse. Follows all the rules. Wears the expensive suits. Bright, driven. Smooth. So why am I not pissing all over myself with joy?
“Just drop me off if you don’t mind. I’ll take a rain check on everything else.”
The next day is Tuesday and I drag myself back into the office.
“Kennedy wants to meet with you," my secretary says with an ominous look on her face. "Great, thanks, Kandi.”
This could not possibly be anything bad. I've gotten my billable hours in, somehow, by the grace of God. I've brought in powerful clients from the Hamptons in New York, plus three athletes who are former teammates of mine and now starting businesses.
"Good morning, Chenera, there are two new cases I will be assigning to you."
As if I'm not busy enough, up to my eyeballs. "Sir, I apologize, but right now I'm really inundated with cases, especially Dream Stage and ensuring it is successful with the huge event it's bidding for."
My boss eyes me. "These clients specifically requested you. They are influential. So we’re not turning them down. You're going to have to make it work." The way he stares back at me, indicating this is not up for discussion. "Are we clear?"
I long for the day when I don't have to take orders from anybody—not my parents, not my bosses, and not even my…
I stop myself. Because I love her. I adore her. Worship her.
"Yes, sir."
He passes me two files. One of them is the Down Under Corporation.
“Well then, what are you waiting for? The Down Under Corporation is a three-hour drive and you might be out there for a day or two, so you should probably start packing.”
An hour later, I pack a bag of hiking boots, a sleeping bag, cargo outdoor pants, and a puffer vest with pockets, flashlight, some workout gear, sports bras, flares I happened to have from my outdoor excursions with friends. And then, there is a map to a remote Virginia area, wherever in the hell I'm supposed to be going. For this new company called Down Under.
Hot tears burn my eyes. Any other time, I would be excited to check out a new outdoor location. But now I stash this gear in my bag like we’re in a boxing match. My life is not my own. And what are my options?
“You just need to stop acting like being a high school gym coach is beneath you,” Ilyana says over the Bluetooth in my Jeep as I talk to her during my drive.
“Says the damn travel vlogger.” I respond, wiping my tears. “Let’s trade places and you take my job. So I can hop on planes, all expenses paid, and get free swag and accommodations. And you take these bullshit assignments to companies you don’t care about.”
“You let your family talk you into this. I ignore my family.”
“No, your family lets you do whatever because you’re the baby of all those kids. I’m an only child. Not so easy.”
Illy really did luck out, starting a YouTube channel as a teenager while traveling with her siblings or grandfather. It was making her money by the time she turned fifteen. That she was already making her own money shielded her from their demands that she learn the family real estate business.
I rub the tears from my eyes so the road doesn’t become so blurry I can’t see. Kind of like my future right about now.
Being a high school gym coach was probably about as gratifying as that Records Room I had spent much of last week living in. But truth be told, coach or gym instructor are the only other two careers I qualify for, since I’ve never really worked in any other field before this year. Which is why I listened to my parents after my injury, and got a law degree when they told me to.
“I don’t think gym instructor is beneath me. I just want to wake up and not feel trapped. And I don’t know if gym coach is my escape route.”
No response.
“Ill?”
Nothing.
I peek down at my phone sitting in the cupholder. The bars are gone, replaced by the symbol indicating I have no signal. I’ve driven so far into the Virginia mountain ranges I have no way of communicating with the outside world.
Without a signal, my GPS on my Jeep goes dead. Fortunately, I didn’t forget that map, which I follow another forty-five miles.
I park the Jeep a remote location, along the edges of Virginia. Beautiful and scenic as ever, the trees and yellowing foliage in early fall are not enough to lift my mood.
